Solutions helping farmers reduce emissions, LIC says

GENETIC and technology solutions are already starting to chisel away at New Zealand’s agricultural emissions, Livestock Improvement Corp says.

Farmers were achieving record milk production with fewer cows as LIC’s tools helped farmers ‘‘get more value on farm and ultimately do more with less’’, LIC board chairman Murray King said.

Nearly half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions come from agriculture with the main source being methane from livestock digestive systems. The Zero Carbon Bill — passed unanimously by Parliament — aims to get methane emissions 24%47% lower than 2017 levels by 2050. Economists and members of the dairy sector have estimated the cost of doing that at billions.

LIC gathered data from herd testing, which involved collecting a representative milk sample from every animal in the herd. LIC now had more than one billion records stored in the cloud and one of the largest animal databases in the world, Mr King said.

LIC’s herd testing provided data that allowed farmers to boost quality and production levels, he said.

The testing identified the highest producers, which could then be selectively bred.

It also shone a spotlight on poor producers which might need to be dried off or culled and animals that might have mastitis by looking at the somatic cell count.

It could also identify dairy cows that produced milk containing only the A2 betacasein protein.

The data also made it possible to monitor the herd against diseases such as Johne’s disease and bovine viral diarrhoea, to minimise production loss, he said.